100 Things to do while Breastfeeding

By Melissa Addey

Did you know that the average mother could spend over 700 hours per child breastfeeding? That's precious time for a new parent!

This little book contains one hundred ideas for things to do while breastfeeding – from bonding with your baby to following your dreams.

The ideas help you to:

• Bond with your baby
• Feel good: mind, body and soul
• Lose the 'baby brain'
• Make time for your older children
• Stay in touch with your friends
• Stay in love with your partner
• Multitask to free up more time in your life
• Rethink and revamp your life

Many mothers will find creative ideas here that could significantly enhance their breastfeeding experience. NCT practitioners will find some useful ideas in this book – and they might even want to recommend it to mothers as a relaxing read while breastfeeding. I found myself impressed with the range and variety of suggestions… it has a quiet profundity. – Nena Blake, Breastfeeding Counsellor

Who knew there were this many things you could do while breastfeeding (besides logging onto Mumsnet, of course)? For many mothers, the time spent feeding their baby offers a rare oasis of calm and this book has a hugely imaginative range of things you can try out while feeding your baby.
– Justine Roberts, Mumsnet Founder

• Language: English
• Publisher: Letterpress Publishing
• Release date: Apr 24, 2015
• ISBN: 9780993181733

Melissa Addey

I grew up on an organic farm in Italy and was home educated. Along the way I’ve worked for Sainsbury’s head office looking after the organic range of products as well as developing new products and packaging; for Roehampton University developing student entrepreneurs; done a Masters focused on creativity and worked as a business consultant on a government scheme for over six years offering mentoring, advice, training and grants to small businesses, mostly in the food sector. I now live in London with my husband, young son and baby daughter, looking after the kids and writing. I write historical fiction, non fiction and magazine articles.

Book preview

700 Hours And Counting: Why I Wrote This Book

Let’s say you feed your baby every three hours. That’s about average. So you are feeding eight times in twenty-four hours. I’m going to err on the very conservative side here and say that each feed lasts half an hour. I can hear many of you snorting already. I know my daughter took at least an hour to feed for her first few weeks and I have many friends for whom an hour was a mere trifle, their babies stretching out feeding sessions into what appeared to be whole days. But bear with me. I’m trying not to exaggerate in any way. So we have eight feeds lasting half an hour each – so that’s four hours every day. Times seven days a week is twenty-eight hours. Times four weeks to make a month, and let’s say for the sake of argument that you feed your baby for six months, though plenty of people continue breastfeeding for much longer than that. You’re now looking at close to seven hundred hours spent breastfeeding, and as I said, I’m erring heavily on the conservative side. You could well be clocking up double or even triple that.

If there’s one thing you don’t have enough of, as a parent, it’s time. So losing seven hundred hours over six months (that’s about two waking months of your life, by the way) to a process where you sit still and stare into space seems like a waste. Yes, of course you can gaze lovingly at your baby (see the number one suggestion in this book) but I’m not sure that doing that for seven hundred hours is really a good use of your time – or that you will fail to bond with your baby if you take your eyes off them for some of that time.

Sometimes it is bliss to just sit still and do nothing at all while your baby feeds, especially if you have a lot on or several children. I suggest you enjoy those moments! But sometimes it would be nice to be doing something for yourself as well as for your baby. Some of the suggestions here are a one-off, some could become a habit. Some may sound odd, some may sound dull. Some may not be relevant to you, for example if you don’t have older children then the section on that will be of little interest (for now). But with one hundred ideas, I am sure there’s something in here for you. If you invent some more things to do, let me know and I’ll share them with other mothers! [e-mail]

I think you will find breastfeeding more rewarding, more interesting and more fun if you are enjoying yourself. I hope that somewhere in this book you will find some suggestions that suit you and your life.

Welcome to 100 things to do while Breastfeeding.

Some assumptions…

Of course you can breastfeed anywhere, so for all I know you spend all your breastfeeding sessions climbing the Eiffel Tower, on a train across the Australian outback, out dancing in a club and doing your yoga class. If so then I take my hat off to you. But if you’ve chosen to look at this book then I’m going to make some assumptions. I’m assuming that a fair few of your breastfeeding sessions are actually at home sitting down and that this book will be helpful to you for those moments where you feel a little bored and aren’t sure what else you could be doing whilst breastfeeding. I’m also assuming you’ll use it when you get a chance to decide what you’d like to be doing (as opposed to feeding whilst eating/cleaning/doing a million and one other things). So most but not all of my suggestions are for when you are at home, sitting down and with the option to choose what you’d like to do. You’ll probably be on maternity leave, but there are also suggestions relevant to when you’re back at work. I’m also assuming that at these moments you’ll be mostly one-handed. If you are bottle-feeding there are plenty of suggestions here that can work for you too, but perhaps not all of the one hundred as you’ll be holding a bottle with what would usually be your spare hand, hence my emphasis on breastfeeding. There is also a way of breastfeeding called biological nurturing (see resources at the back of the book) which allows the baby to find the breast by itself and may leave you with two hands free, in which case, many suggestions will be easier!

I’m also assuming that you and your baby are pretty comfortable with breastfeeding. I know some people may struggle at first: do ask for help and find out what works best for you. Once you’ve got the hang of it then you’ll be relaxed and ready to try out some of these ideas without worrying about how the feeding itself is going. A few tips if you’re new to breastfeeding: learn some different positions to feed in so that you can find the best ones for you (La Leche League and the NCT can both help with this) and create a few ‘nesting’ spots round the house where you can comfortably feed. Keep a little basket at each spot with water, muslins, nipple cream, pen and paper, books and other useful devices you can bring along to each like a smartphone, which is an invaluable tool as a new mum with only one hand and a lot to do! If it takes you an extra twenty seconds to get set up so you are comfy and happy, I suggest your baby can wait that long even if they are fussing for their food. Better they fuss a tiny bit longer than you get stuck for possibly an hour, uncomfortable and bored. I think your baby will feed better if you are happy and relaxed.

Bond with your baby

I know it’s a complete cliché, but that’s because it’s true: your baby will grow up faster than you can ever imagine. My baby daughter held her head up today and wanted to be sitting up, not lying down and I suddenly saw that a part of her babyhood had already gone, even though she is still only a few months old. Even on your busy days and when you are tired, occasionally take a moment to relish each stage of your baby’s changing life. So this first section is all about bonding with your baby. Since you are already holding your baby and feeding them, you are of course already bonding, but in this section I list a few extra things you can do to make this intimate time even more special for you and your baby. If you can add some of these activities to your usual breastfeeding sessions even once a day you will create a lovely special time that you will look back at with fondness. You will be helping your baby to form its deep attachment to you and you to your child.

1:

Gaze at your baby

You won’t need me telling you to do this at the beginning, you’ll be too in awe of the tiny new life you have created not to gaze at them all the time, let alone when you’re breastfeeding. But when some time has passed and you are tired, busy and have a million other things to think of, take a moment again to look down at the beautiful special person you are holding and be happy. They will get bigger and wriggle away from you when you